Farm plans new sheds for 200,000 chickens

A large Herefordshire chicken producer is seeking official permission to knock down and rebuild its sheds.

Whittern Farms of Lyonshall near Kington has requested an formal opinion on whether it needs an environmental impact assessment (EIA) for its Hollybush Farm site, where it wants to replace seven “small age-expired” poultry sheds dating from the 1960s, with four new, larger ones on a neighbouring blackcurrant field.

“The current capacity of the site is 204,000 broiler hens, which will remain unchanged,” it says.

With a similar total area and height to the existing buildings, the four new sheds would each be 105 metres long, 14 metres wide and 5.6 metres tall.

They would be clad in matching steel sheeting and would have solar panels mounted on the roofs.

Reducing the number of buildings would also reduce the number of worker movements between them, and so improve site biosecurity, the farm’s application points out.

“Standard noise, odour, dust, vermin and fly management controls will be put in place,” while the “more efficient” new facilities would be a net reduction in noise, it adds.

And it claims the visual impact of the farm “will be improved from most directions for most residents, with the site having a smaller overall footprint in the surrounding landscape”.

The roughly 1,650 tonnes of manure produced per year would continue to be incinerated locally, producing renewable heating for the sheds along with phosphorus-rich ash which is “exported out of catchment”.

Whittern Farms owner Jo Hilditch told County Life last April that her supermarket customers have covered the extra cost of giving birds 20 per cent more space in the sheds, “so we can still make our margins”.